Blogs on Expeditionary Learning

Among the highlights of the two weeks my wife and I recently spent exploring Bryce, Zion and other wilderness wonders of the Southwest, was watching a beaming little girl, about six or seven years old, get sworn in as a Junior Ranger by a National Park Ranger. That moment capsulized all the moments during the trip when we watched kids of all ages drinking in the trails and vistas. We were continually struck by how many happy, engaged kids we saw. This wilderness experience was clearly enriching for them and for their families. At the same time, it reminded me about the relative absence of these experiences from the lives of most kids, and about how little of this connection between children and the wilderness is cultivated by most schools.

In a recent opinion piece for The New York Times, Michael Ellsberg created a stir by asking, "Will Dropouts Save America?" After dropping names of illustrious dropouts -- the late Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg, among others -- he argues that school as we know it does little to prepare students to be entrepreneurs whose creativity will create jobs.

Cocooned in the safety of a library carrel, students can travel the world via Google Earth and see live video feed of the Doll's Festival in Japan. The haiku master Basho had to travel on foot for the same event, sleeping on hard floors in flea-infested straw. Today, students can peruse images of the English countrysides, full of the oxlips, nodding violets, and sweet musk-roses that inspired Shakespeare, without dampening their sneakers in dew or suffering the consequences of allergies. They can listen to the voices of strangers telling their life stories on podcasts and add their own stories to the voicethread of the world.

Real World Reality Check

I fell in love with school when I found out about a hidden gem called the Team Program. The Team Program is a rare experiential wilderness education program designed to get juniors in high school out of the four walls they have been accustomed to in the traditional classroom, and into the real world. Twenty-four students from the three major public schools in my county are accepted each year into this public school program. The program is held at a small public high school and the diverse group of juniors spends the year there, before returning to their "home school."